Skill Order

Champion Matchups

Introduction

Fiddle is a fun and underused support character. His harass early on is incredible with the low mana rank 1 Dark Wind and his fear, especially when ranked up, is one of the most potent crowd control abilities in the game. He also has amazing sustain with life drain, allowing you to recover from riskier plays or dumb mistakes and stay in lane.

People mistakenly build damage items on him when they are support when, due to lower gold, they should focus on surviving and putting out lots of CC in a fight.

Once you hit level 6, surprise ult can be devastating and puts a lot of pressure on the lane when you're in control of the bush.

Good base damage on abilities.

Cons:

No buffs or heals for your carry.

Struggles if you fall behind a lot in lane.

E spam can push lane and steal minion kills from your carry.

Summoner Spells

Explanation: Because you have no slow in your kit to help secure a kill when your fear runs out, also very useful if ganked by jungler - Fear jungler, exhaust AD carry = escape.

Incredibly useful all round skill, works well with ult to stick to enemy if they flash away.

Masteries

5/0/25
Prioritising cooldown reduction over everything else.
By late game if you have full build you will actually have 6 cooldown wasted but I think it's worth it for the benefit early game. If you'd rather spend those points elsewhere you can take the points from Offensive and drop them on extra health in the Defensive tree.

Skills

Passive: Dread

Explanation:
Pretty self explanatory, a wiser opponent may notice the debuff appear on their character if you're hiding in a bush nearby.

Q: Terrify

Explanation:
Your defining ability. With it maxed out it will fear your target for 3 seconds, which is amazing, and you can get it down to around 7 seconds cooldown with high cooldown reduction items.

In lane save this for the ADC when they have fully committed to the engagement.
If you think the jungler might be around, save it for the gank, if they show up one fear should end the attempt.

In teamfights you are primarily a PEELER, that means you will fear the enemy assassins/bruisers who are diving on your carries. Eg. Akali, Katarina(especially when she ults), Khazix, Zed, Jax etc. This ability is incredible at peeling and completely shuts them down.

W: Drain

Explanation:
This ability will keep your health topped up in lane. Try not to expose yourself when you're draining, and be kind to your ADC and cancel the drain before you finish off the cannon minion.

It's generally not worth using this when you're chasing, or even under attack unless it's a last ditch effort to survive whilst your AD carry is killing the aggressors.

E: Dark Wind

Explanation:
Possibly one of the best level 1 abilities in the game, it costs 50 mana so you can pretty much cast it whenever you want, but you can use this to deadly effect if you pick the right moment.

The ideal time use it is when the ADC and Support are standing near each other with no minions around, it will bounce 5 times between them(silencing each hit), and doing close to 300 damage to the pair of them. It's devastating in the early levels and will allow you to take total control of the lane.

Try and remember to cast this either before or after you have feared someone, that way you get the most out of the debuffs.

You won't want to level this ability past 1 until all the others are maxed as you just get a small damage increase for a vastly increased mana cost.

R: Crowstorm

Explanation:
Another signature skill, brilliant for jumping over a wall on to unsuspecting opponents.
Has very high base damage so you will still be scary even without AP items, just be weary of getting interupted during the channel while you cast it.

If you can hit level 6 before the other side you can do a devastating crowstorm on them almost guaranteeing a kill of 1 or both of them if your ADC is ready and you have fear/exhaust up.

Another tactic in lane is to hide behind the wall by your first tower,(works fine with blue or purple side), and have your ADC bait them to engage on the tower, then you pop over and destroy them.

Items

I think the main misconception with most Support Fiddles is they think they should build damage to be useful, this is wrong. You won't get enough gold to do the kind of damage you need to be effective in a damage role, so instead you focus on your real strength, your fear. Your is not affected by AP but it is affected by cooldown reduction, so you want to prioritise that along with survivability so that you can keep fearing your opponents.

As a result the following items are most beneficial to you in a support 'Fearing Shithead' role.

You will always want of course, you ward first and foremost.

Lots of Active Item Build

This item is incredibly gold efficient, so much so that the active is "free", the health, armor and cooldown are all excellent stats for fiddle.
This item synergises brilliantly with Fiddle, health, cooldown, regen and an active that is insanely useful in a teamfight, especially with active.
Cheap, easy source of movement and cooldown reduction, always buy these.
One of the best tanky support items, very cost efficient and incredibly useful to the team. Upgrade ro Bulwark if you have extra gold and enemy team is heavily magic based.

Passive Build
Similar to having both and .
Provides lots of armour, a whopping 20% Cooldown reduction, and an excellent passive that will gimp DPS output of a heavily AD based team. The mana is handy too.
As above.
As above.

If the game goes on late, you may be able to afford a Zhonyas, this will give you that clutch survival ability and quite a bit of extra damage and armour for your .

Laning

Lots of harass with E and auto attacks, try to cast on them when they are in pairs.

Use fear as more of a reactionary defensive tool, PROTECT THE CARRY.

Use drain to keep yourself healthy, you can be very aggressive/stupid with harass because of this.

Once you hit 6, set up an engage quickly with , MAKE SURE your ADC is ready with you.

Get your ADC to bait so you can over walls.

DON'T SKIMP ON WARDING FOR DAMAGE ITEMS.

Teamfights

Ult is up?
You don't always have to immediately into a fight, if your team are not ready for it or are too far away you will die quickly.

It's actually better to wait until one team has engaged, that way you can stand back, peel for your carries and then quickly into the thick of it and create confusion. Because of the items you've built you'll actually be reasonably tanky, which is good, because when the crows start cawin' everyone is gonna try and kill you. If you have Zhonyas use it if they are focusing you, hopefully when it ends you'll have fear up again and you can fear the primary threats.

Ult is down?
DON'T RUN INTO THE ENEMY TEAM JUST TO FEAR THEIR ADC! You will die, for little effect, keep peeling as your fear has a short range. The rest of your team should be able to deal with the ADC as their front line disappears.

Don't waste your on pointless harassing, it won't do much damage at this stage to be that useful. Instead save it for when someone engages, it will screw up people's cast orders and generally create more chaos.

Summary:

PEEL threats off your carry with .

SILENCE the enemy team when they engage.

Crowstorm when it is safe to cast and team has engaged.

Stay mobile and KEEP FEARING dangerous targets.

Comments

Saying that you hardly run out of mana with fiddles makes me scratch my head. I'm guessing you strictly mean support fiddles which may have some truth to it depending on the rate you spam E and peal for your ADC.It is important to note that fiddles is absolutely useless without mana, and is basically a liability the minute it happens. It can certainly be argued that Heal and Clarity are not so valuable for fiddles himself, however the same is not true for your lane partner, and certainly the remainder of your team from mid to end game.

If i were sona or taric, ofcourse i would chose exhaust over heal and Clarity in almost if not every case. Those are top tier supports with heal/mana regen skills that enable them to carry their adc until they mature. Heal and Clarity give fiddles, an otherwise mediocre support, some of these functions and the ability to sustain and carry his lane mate. The fact that he has fear, softens the blow of not having exhaust tremendously. Fear at level 3-5 should be an automatic kill for any respectable adc. I'm hardly an expert, but its how i see it.

I've played quite a few games as support fiddles with varying success. Like picking any champ you really have to be careful of who you will be laning with and against, because it is a very slippery slope. Other than pealing via fear, fiddles really has no support characteristics, so its important to work in support aura/active items to your build as early as you can obviously.

I know picking exhaust is standard cookie cutter support, but i believe it can be a waste since fiddles has fear. Heal, CV or Clarity i believe to be more useful in many cases.

Further, every game is different, and development of skills should be tweeked to suit the specific game. If you need stronger poke, then develop your E earlier, if you are constantly being ganked or camped then emphasize your Q development. Lastly, you really have to have an adc comfortable with you and one that understands that fiddles is not your prototypical support. Fiddles is an agressive support, who will pay dividends if the adc is patient with the fact you will inherently steal CS with E. He/she must understand that harassing the enemy adc with E will interfere with his farming and give your adc time and space to do his thing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and your ADC has to understand this.